Suicide bombers target Turkish embassy

For the third time in a week, suicide car bombers struck in Baghdad today, this time outside the Turkish Embassy in yet another blow against those who would help the US occupation of Iraq.

Witnesses said the driver and a bystander were killed, and hospital officials said at least 13 people were injured.

"This is the act of those who want to turn Iraq into a terror paradise," said Turkish Ambassador Osman Paksut, whose government has offered peacekeeping troops to reinforce the US military presence here, a move strongly opposed by Iraqis.

Just who is behind the bombings - including two killing 18 other people in Baghdad in recent days - remained a mystery, although Iraqis converging on the scene afterward began chanting pro-Saddam Hussein slogans.

Much of the blast this afternoon was absorbed by concrete barriers outside the embassy, US officials said. The bomber might have caught US troops if he had struck last weekend, when they were deployed outside the mission on northwest Baghdad's broad Waziriyah thoroughfare, apparently because of a threat.

"About three days ago, we received indications that there might be increased danger on the Turkish Embassy," Col Peter Mansoor of the US 1st Armored Division told reporters. "We revved up security measures based on those indications."

He said an investigation by the FBI and Iraqi police had begun. Similar investigations of seven other vehicle bombings, killing more than 140 people across Iraq beginning in early August, have made no known breakthroughs.

In other developments Tuesday:

-Gunmen of rival Shiite Muslim factions clashed in the southern holy city of Karbala, and witnesses said several people were killed or injured. It appeared to be part of a power struggle between forces of the firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and followers of religious leaders who take a more moderate stand toward the US occupation.

-Farther south, at his headquarters in Najaf, al-Sadr demanded the Americans set a timetable for withdrawal. "Whoever cooperates with the occupation forces is not a Shi'ite. Indeed, they are not Muslims," he told reporters.

-In central Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, where the Americans face other opposition, 100 people gathered at the main mosque in the restive city of Fallujah to demand release of a popular cleric arrested yesterday by US troops. Sheik Jamal Shaker Nazzal is an outspoken opponent of the US occupation.

-The visiting US commerce secretary, Don Evans, delivered an upbeat message at a Baghdad news conference, saying: "We need to continue to focus on moving the entire country and region toward a more secure, hopeful and prosperous country and region." He said he had seen "endless successes" in Iraq, citing restoration of electrical power and reopening of schools and hospitals.

Today's bombing was the third since last Thursday, when a driver detonated his car in a police station courtyard in a north Baghdad slum, killing himself and nine others. On Sunday, a similar suicide bombing killed eight near the downtown Baghdad Hotel, home to US and Iraqi officials.

The string of attacks began in August with bombings at the Jordanian Embassy and the UN headquarters here. All the targets have been institutions perceived as cooperating with the US occupation.

The Turkish Embassy blast occurred at about 2:45pm as traffic streamed by the compound in the quiet, middle-class Waziriyah district.

"I was in a building across the street. I rushed over and saw that a car had exploded in front of the embassy," said Ahmed Hashem, 30, a graduate student at Mustansiryah University. He said the suicide driver's dismembered body was blown down the avenue, and a second person was also dead at the scene.

"I know that because I helped carry him into the ambulance," Hashim said. This was not immediately confirmed by US or Iraqi authorities, but a painting contractor at the scene, Salah Khadhim, also said he saw a passerby killed.

The American colonel Mansoor reported only the driver killed and two embassy staff members injured. But officials at two area hospitals said they received at least 13 wounded from the blast, including three seriously injured.

After the explosion, about 50 Iraqis gathered in a street behind the embassy chanting a pro-Saddam Hussein slogan - "We sacrifice our blood and soul for you!" - and waving Iraqi banknotes with the ousted dictator's portrait. Police fired in the air to disperse them, and took several into custody.

Popular suspicions in the bombings have focused on diehard Saddam supporters, also blamed for the daily hit-run attacks against American troops across central Iraq; or on al-Qaeda adherents or other Muslim fanatics.

Asked whether he thought today's bombing was related to the issue of Turkish peacekeepers in Iraq, Col Mansoor said, "I think it has everything to do with that."

The parliament in neighbouring Turkey last week approved dispatching peacekeeping troops sometime in the coming months to help ease the burden on US forces. But Iraq's Governing Council has expressed sharp opposition to the idea, because of the bitter legacy of centuries of Turkish colonial domination of this region.

In Ankara today, the Turkish Foreign Ministry indicated the attack would not affect an eventual troop deployment. "Turkey will persevere with its efforts with determination," it said.

In another development, a spokeswoman for the US 4th Infantry Division, Maj Josslyn Aberle, said the military did not have any reports that the fugitive Saddam was hiding in his hometown, the central city of Tikrit. This countered a statement yesterday by a division officer that the deposed president was recently in the area.